


Jack of Hearts

by reinkist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe - Space, Body Worship, Bulges and Nooks, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Class Differences, Corporations, Dersites and Prospitians, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fame, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gen, Heist, Light BDSM, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mobsters, Post-War, Quadrant Confusion, Rough Sex, Space Stations, Spaceships, Xenophilia, enthusistically consensual humiliation, from the beforementioned rough sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6834154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/pseuds/reinkist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As soon as the stomach-churning drop out of FTL is over Karkat's neural link goes absolutely apeshit with notifications. They pile up in his field of vision, oldest to newest, flashing practically every color of the goddamned rainbow. He groans and shoves them all out of his face with a swipe of his hand.</p><p>He submits his landing clearance and TASCo import authorization and flops back into his seat. With a few gestures he flips the image on his viewscreen to his forward facing cameras so he can look out at the expanse of Kuiper Station, tapping the confirmation for the station docking computer to take over the controls.</p><p>He almost can't believe that he's actually back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prospect

**Author's Note:**

> [a soundtrack, if you so desire](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpE0wKdqlpCS7PIf76Bp25dIYVZ4gBdoX)

As soon as the stomach-churning drop out of FTL is over Karkat's neural link goes absolutely apeshit with notifications. They pile up in his field of vision, oldest to newest, flashing practically every color of the goddamned rainbow. He groans and shoves them all out of his face with a swipe of his hand.

He submits his landing clearance and TASCo import authorization and flops back into his seat. With a few gestures he flips the image on his viewscreen to his forward facing cameras so he can look out at the expanse of Kuiper Station, tapping the confirmation for the station docking computer to take over the controls.

He almost can't believe that he's actually back.

It's the closest thing to home that Karkat has, outside his ship. The station is made up of four city-sized outward facing domes, plated with transparent aluminum and linked by clusters of enclosed monorail tracks, slowly rotating around an artificially generated gravity well. Almost everyone who makes a living as a cargo runner in the Galaxies spends at least part of their time in this station, parking in A or D Sector (both containing a practically endless expanse of hangars and warehouse facilities), sleeping in B Sector (living quarters), and relaxing in C Sector (eating, shopping and entertainment).

It's been a quarter of a sweep since Karkat's been here.

It's crowded as fuck.

Karkat slings his backpack over one shoulder and leaves his shipment to the small fleet of warehouse robots now zipping in and out of his cargo hold like a line of those tiny terran beasts that can carry fifty times their own weight. He shoulders his way through the crowd at the hangar's entrance, his head down, eyebrows drawn, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. Terrans and trolls chatter and laugh and shout and shriek, the sound of it echoing and multiplying in the lobby of the spaceport until it's pressing down on Karkat like a boot on a soda can. He always forgets how _loud_ other sentient beings can be, every fucking time.

His feet carry him automatically towards the train heading for B Sector before he even realizes where he's going. This is what he's going to do, then? Go home and be alone? Again? However much a tiny, musty room featuring a door, a recuperacoon, a couch, a sink, an ablution trap and a toilet that he timeshares with a surly olive blood could be called "home", anyway, but ugh.

Is this what he does, now? Sits around in complete solitude? Even after he's been alone in his freighter, off the grid, for an interminable quarter of a fucking sweep? It's only 1600 hours.

Karkat grits his teeth and swipes his notifications back into view.

K4RK4T!  
4R3NT YOU SUPPOS3D TO B3 B4CK 4LR34DY??  
1 H4V3 4 JOB FOR YOU!  
I FUCKING *JUST* GOT BACK. I HAVEN'T EVEN MADE IT OUT OF A, TEREZI. THEY HAVEN'T EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO TRANSFER ME THE CREDITS FOR THE *LAST* JOB.  
I'M NOT DOING ANOTHER ONE. I'M ON VACATION, STARTING RIGHT FUCKING NOW.  
TH1S ON3 1S GOOD  
V3RY V3RY GOOD  
D3L1C1OUS 3V3N!  
TRUST M3  
1M T4LK1NG H1GH ST4K3S  
V3RY H1GH ST4K3S!!!  
...  
HOW MUCH.  
F1V3 HUNDR3D  
THOUS4ND  
CR3D1TS  
......  
WHAT??  
.........  
HOLY FUCKING SHIT  
1 KNOW R1GHT???  
WHAT IN THE NAME OF GL'BGOLYB'S TERTIARY REPRODUCTIVE FLAP AM I RUNNING??  
BLOCKS OF TRITIUM??  
BARRELS OF ANTIMATTER???  
1 DONT KNOW  
TH3 CL13NT 1S V3RY S3CR3T1VE  
H3 W1LL T3LL M3 NOTH1NG SP3C1F1C  
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, TEREZI  
I DON'T MAKE RUNS FOR "SECRETIVE" CLIENTS.  
I'M NOT PUTTING MYSELF IN A SITUATION WHERE I MIGHT LOSE MY LICENSE FOR GOD KNOWS WHAT SHADY ASSHOLE. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT HOW MUCH HE'S PAYING.  
K4RK4T!! 1TS F1V3 HUNDR3D THOUS4ND!!!  
PL34S3 4T L34ST T4LK TO H1M  
K4RK4T!!!  
...FINE  
FINE  
WHAT'S HIS HANDLE  
H3 S4YS H3LL M33T YOU 4T THE 4TH STR33T D1VE 1N C  
FINE.  
I CAN'T TELL IF THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE AN "A" OR A "FOUR".  
K4RK4T 1TS OBV1OUSLY 4 FOUR  
DONT PL4Y DUMB  
DUMBNUBS >:]  
UGH.

This is a bad idea, Karkat can't help thinking on the crowded train to C, one hand tight on the handrail. The "mysterious cargo" rolls over and over in his mind, getting more and more extravagant, more and more illegal, more and more immoral. Cascades of glittering diamonds? Unspeakable black market goods? Illegal drugs? _Living beings?_

Five hundred thousand credits.

_Five hundred thousand credits._

Even after Terezi takes her 10% it's _still_ enough to keep him going for _sweeps_. He could move somewhere else, away from Kuiper Station. Somewhere with an _outside_. Somewhere with fucking _grass_ , where the water is sweet and the oxygen is sweeter.

The train glides to a halt and Karkat steps off with the rest of the crowd, almost in a daze. _Five hundred thousand credits._

It's even worse in C than it was in the spaceport. There are humans, trolls, and the occasional carapacian everywhere, bustling along the sidewalks, moving in and out of the mishmash of bars, restaurants, VR lounges, stores and communal movie houses, in the motorbikes and passenger vehicles whizzing down the streets. Honking. Shouting. Flashing lights. Karkat squares his shoulders and draws an upward-pointing arrow in the air that activates his link. "Fourth Street Dive," he says aloud, and an arrow appears superimposed on the sidewalk in front of him, ticking forward down the block and around the corner, leaving a dotted line behind it.

The bar, too, is crowded.

Karkat tosses his backpack into a thankfully empty booth. The vinyl on his seat is cracked and the table is worn, its surface a patchwork of dents and rings. There's a light in the center, a cloudy plastic orb that casts a yellowish glow over the tabletop. The floor is sticky. When a server shows up, terran, with a long braid, Karkat starts a tab. He orders the palest ale they have, more out of courtesy than anything else.

WELL I'M HERE.  
WHO AM I EVEN LOOKING FOR.  
H3 S41D H3 WOULD F1ND YOU  
FINE.

He watches the other patrons with a churning feeling that's half nervous excitement, half dread. Terrans and trolls crowd around the bar, grabbing drinks, and around the dance floor, grabbing hands, grabbing hips. Bass rattles the surface of the table. Lights flicker and strobe in the artificial fog that's irritating the back of Karkat's throat. There's no way any of this is going to work out. Five hundred thousand credits? Yeah right. People like him never even _imagine_ having five hundred thousand credits. Who is he kidding, here? This can't be fucking real.

Karkat can just barely see the DJ on stage over all the dancers. He's tall. Lanky, with narrow shoulders. His weird pale human hair sweeps down over his forehead and his t-shirt hugs the planes of his chest, the lines of his waist. What the fuck, who wears shades _inside_? In the _dark_? On a _space station_? One of his hands presses one side of a giant pair of headphones to one ear while the other is busy interfacing with his link. He's bobbing his head along to the music and it makes him look like a fucking quackbeast.

The music is a mashup between an troll pop hit from the previous sweep and, Karkat guesses, some terran song. It does mesh well, Karkat will give him that. The DJ grabs the air, pulls down, and the whole song crashes into a stuttering bass, and as he drags two fingers back upwards arpeggios crawl their way up and up and up until the whole thing rearranges itself back into the main melody.

That was actually pretty good, and it's really starting to piss Karkat off.

He takes a swig of beer, chin in one hand. He absentmindedly taps the side of one shoe against the leg of the table to the thump of the bass, eyes still on the stage. So what. He's watching the show. Just like everyone else.

When the song is over, the DJ stretches, both arms over his head, body twisting, grinning, smug as fuck. Karkat looks away, finally, sweeps his eyes over the churning crowd, searching for some kind of clue as to who the fuck he's actually supposed to be meeting. Nobody seems to notice him. What if his client doesn't come? What if the deal is off already? What if Karkat fucks this up? What is he going to do?

The server comes by again. Karkat orders another beer. How long is he going to have to wait here?

What is he going to do?

"I saw you looking." It's the DJ. What the...oh, fuck no.

"You think? You were on stage, dumbfuck."

The DJ slides lazily into the seat across from Karkat. Oh no. No, no, no. "Nah." He draws out that syllable, leaning forward over the table. There's alcohol on his breath. "You were _looking_."

"Well, good. I'm glad we've established that I was 'looking'," Karkat says with exaggerated air quotes. "I'm kind of waiting for someone, here, so I'd appreciate it if you'd, I don't know. Clear off?"

"Looking," the DJ says, pointing, finger hovering dangerously close to Karkat's face. "Like your pantry's been fulla cobwebs and I'm a double helping of hot, sizzling ass."

Karkat's breath catches, then his lip twitches upward, baring his teeth. "If you could mix music as well as you mix metaphors, assclown, you'd be on the fast-track to fucking _stardom_."

The DJ slouches back, head falling sideways, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Nice. Nice! Holy shit. Can I buy you a drink?" He raises a hand and waves at Karkat's approaching server. Shit. Shit. Shit. "I'm Dave."

Karkat drags his mind back to why he's here, to the _job_ , to _five hundred thousand credits_. "Not interested."

"Hey, bring us two of that green thing, willya?" Dave drawls at the server as she sets Karkat's drink on the table. "They make the best green thing," he says to Karkat behind one hand. The server laughs and heads back towards the bar. Dave slumps forward again, arms extending just a little bit too close to where Karkat's hands are folded on the table. Karkat snatches them back into his lap.

"Are the shades standard issue for DJs, or is that just your own _personal style_ shining through?"

"No, dude, these are all me," Dave deadpans, tapping the frames with one finger. "I mean, wow. What could possibly express futility and anachronism better than wearing sunglasses fifty aus from the sun?"

Anger flares hot in Karkat's chest. Shit. Shit. _Shit._

"But. Sorry. Should've introduced myself proper the first time. I'm really here on business. You're Karkat Vantas, right?"

Oh no.

Oh _no_.

"I've been talking to your agent? Terezi? Since yesterday. Said you'd be back in Sol today..."

No.

No.

No, no, no.

This is a fucking disaster.

"I need some cargo run. I'm sure she told you what I'd be paying?"

"Why me?" Karkat snaps, claws digging into his own thighs. "What have you even _heard_ about me because I seriously doubt..."

"I've _heard_ that you just got back from Rigel and you haven't signed up yet for another run. You're not currently under contract with TASCo, which means you can do whatever freelance shit you want. You have a galaxy-class rig with a hundred and seventy-five cubic hectares of hold. Trolls don't name personal ships but yours has a sideways 69 on the side." Dave doodles the shape in midair. 

"But _why_?" Karkat leans forward over the table, eyes narrowed. "With that kind of money you could get _anyone_ to run that cargo for you. I don't even have words to _describe_ how suspicious this is!"

Dave shrugs, one corner of his mouth quirked upwards in an infuriating smirk. "You'll just have to trust me."

That anger is building and building. "Oh. Right. Good. All my misgivings are gone, just like that, completely evaporated under the heat of _that_ convincing argument."

Dave's tongue darts out, running over his lip. Karkat grits his teeth. " _So_ , was that a yes or a no?"

Karkat flushes. "I think I'd rather insert my face into the waste recycling system of a star liner during a shipwide epidemic of food poisoning, fuck you very much." The server steps up, setting a "green thing" in front of each of them, and Karkat sniffs at his with unconcealed disgust. It smells abhorrently sour and highly alcoholic. Fucking terrans. Dave's already tossing his back.

Dave drags the back of one hand across his mouth. He grins. "Did I mention that the run is only, like. Nothing? A few hundred thousand aus?"

Karkat grabs his head in both hands. "Is that supposed to _reassure_ me that I'm not going to be cramming my hold full of severed limbs? Because this gets worse and worse with every word that comes out of your mouth."

Dave throws his head back, laughing. He covers his mouth with one hand. "Sorry, it's just...severed limbs. Who do you think I am, anyway?"

"I don't fucking know!"

"I'm Dave Strider," Dave says, showing an impeccable row of white teeth.

Karkat narrows his eyes. "Uh, OK?"

Dave laughs again, looking absolutely delighted. "That name seriously means absolutely nothing to you?"

"What, are you some kind of famous DJ or something? Because based on the fact that you're playing _here_ ," Karkat points at the floor, "you're probably not anywhere _close_ to as famous as you think you are."

"Oh my god. Holy shit. This is amazing. I, uh. Never mind." Dave is still grinning, ear to ear. "I also need to tell you, that, hmm. Actually." The grin is fading. "This is going to sound way worse than it actually is. So, uh. Trust me. It's not as bad as it sounds."

Karkat glares at Dave from under his eyebrows. Of course there's a catch. There's _obviously_ a catch. There's no universe where shit like this wouldn't have a catch. "I can't wait to hear this."

Dave nabs Karkat's untouched drink and downs it. "The uh. Cargo. It was, uh. Stolen. I mean! It was stolen _from_ me. I need to get it back."

Karkat lets out a quick huff of a breath. Despite himself anger is clenching, a knot in his chest, tighter and tighter. "Unless the next thing you say involves me docking at the police station and picking it up from _the proper authorities_ the deal is fucking off."

"Uh." Dave is looking uncomfortable. Karkat wants to grab him by the shoulders and _shake_. "There are no proper authorities, dude. In this case."

Karkat flops back against the back of the booth, both hands over his face. "I can't fucking believe this. This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever been subjected to. Why me, exactly? Again?"

"You're the best option I have right now. Did I mention I'm on a time crunch?"

"No." Karkat drops his hands and levels a stare at Dave that he seriously hopes will cause all that perfect blond hair to go up in flames. "No, you didn't."

"My usual runner is transporting some, uh. Personnel. For me. Right now. And I need the cargo on a ship in, uh, let's see..." He makes a little round gesture in midair, checking the time, then taps his chin in thought. "A hundred and ten hours."

Karkat swallows back the growl building in his throat.

"It's kind of an emergency. So if you're seriously not interested, you know, you should really tell me because I need to find someone else like...right now."

Fucking...shit.

Fucking _shit_.

Five. Hundred. Thousand. Credits.

Grass.

Water.

Air.

Karkat is a fucking _idiot_ for even thinking something like that could be possible. He is a first class piece of gullible shit.

Unbelievable.

"I guess you _are_ going to have to 'find someone else,' because I'm not going to be complicit in this _illegal bullshit_. Fuck. Off." Karkat grabs his backpack by one shoulder strap and shoves himself to his feet, disappointment dragging at him, sinking like a stone in his chest. Dave calls after him as he rushes out of the bar, but he doesn't look back.

 _Unbelievable_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lil glossary:
> 
> FTL: faster than light
> 
> Au: short for Astronomical Unit (a real unit of measurement roughly equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun). Has become a colloquial word in this universe, pronounced like "ow"
> 
> TASCo: the Terran-Alternian Shipping Corporation


	2. Contract

Karkat doesn't even know where he's going, or what he's doing.

He spends what feels like forever just wandering around C, losing himself in the noise, in the anonymity of the crowd, his eyes on the sidewalk. This is fucking ridiculous. It's too fucking much. He probably _is_ better off spending all his time alone in space. He's only been back in civilization for a few hours and he already feels like he's been jammed through the wringer and back out again.

D1D YOU T4LK TO H1M??  
YEAH, I FUCKING DID.  
HOW D1D 1T GO  
UGH  
WH4T H4PP3N3D???  
PLEASE  
TEREZI  
I REALLY DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW  
D1D  
YOU T4K3 TH3 OFF3R  
NO, I FUCKING DIDN'T, TEREZI, OK???

Karkat swipes the conversation off to one side and sets his status to do not disturb. Fuck him, fuck her, fuck himself, fuck his fucking _life_. He'd been looking forward to getting back for what feels like sweeps and now he wishes he never had. What is he even supposed to do now, after all that? Lie face down on the sidewalk and drown in a puddle of his own mucus? He hadn't even finished his second beer, he...

A chill runs down his back.

He...

Never paid his tab.

Karkat turns and rushes back down the sidewalk, sneakers slapping the concrete. Holy _shit_ , what is _wrong_ with him? It doesn't matter how upset he was, what the _fuck_...

He doesn't even see the server out on the floor anymore when he bursts back in through the doors of 4th Street Dive, out of breath. Has it been so long that her shift is over? He runs up to the noisy bar, squeezing between patrons, and finally catches the bartender's eye.

"I need to pay my tab," he yells. "Vantas?"

The bartender scrolls through a list on his link. "Uh, what was that name again?"

"Vantas."

"Huh, I don't have a tab open for you."

"What?"

He shrugs. "Somebody else probably paid it. I dunno." He turns to the next terran now leaning over the bar.

Karkat whips his head around, scanning the crowded tables. He marches back across the room, irritation burning in his throat.

"You didn't have to pay my tab," Karkat says, looming over the booth, arms crossed over his chest. Dave is still there, messaging someone, fingers typing furiously on the surface of the table. There are several more glasses in front of him, most empty, one full.

"Uh, yeah I did," Dave answers after a moment, still typing. 

The small amount of gratitude Karkat had been feeling goes out like a light.

"I just mean, 'cause Jen's shift was ending. That dude over there's got me now. But I still wanted to, you know, tip her, so it actually made it easier." Dave sounds drunk.

Karkat slowly slides back into his seat. His beer is still there. It's warm.

He takes a swig anyway.

"So you. Uh. Know the waitstaff here? Do you, uh, hmm."

"Come here often? Nah." Dave finishes whatever he'd been typing and swipes it away. He leans back, head lolling on the cushion. "We were just talking. Earlier. When I said I could DJ."

Karkat nods, studying Dave, brow furrowed. His expression is completely blank and Karkat can't see his eyes at all behind his shades. "Look, I'm sorry I can't run your cargo. I don't do illegal shit. I just don't."

"Dude! It's not even going to be illegal." Dave waves an impatient hand. "I mean. Not really. Not prosecutably. Uh. I'm just making this worse. But. Basically. I already tried to talk to the 'proper authorities,' but there's nothing they can _do_ , because, they traced the signature of the ship that stole my cargo, and it's headed for Sirius."

Karkat stares at him. "You got robbed by dersites?"

"Yeah. They forced one of my runners out of FTL like three quarters of the way from Terra to Vega. That's where I live. When I feel like living somewhere. I mean. Don't tell anyone. Anyway. She's OK. They just forced her to jettison the cargo. They've been thinking for a while that the dersite mob has some way to flag shipments, that have like, a certain amount of insurance placed on them? The police think that. I mean."

Karkat leans back, arms over his chest. "You still paid her, right? Your runner?"

Dave's mouth twists. "Wow. Uh. Of _course_ I fucking did." He actually looks...hurt. Karkat hunches and takes another swig of beer, sudden guilt pressing down on his shoulders.

"Sorry. We get fucked over all the time over shit like that."

Dave's head drops to one side. "Yeah. I bet."

Karkat stares at the table.

"But uh. Yeah. I have one chance to get my shit back, and it's when the ship docks at the station in Sirius. There's no way I can know if I'm gonna be able to trace it after that, and, even if I could, I'm afraid of what might happen to my cargo, you know?"

Karkat nods. Dave looks genuinely worried, and something uncomfortable rolls in Karkat's gastric sac. He swallows. "So. What exactly are you going to do when the ship docks in Sirius?"

The crease disappears from between Dave's eyebrows. "Don't worry. We have it all planned out."

"Uh huh."

"It's totally foolproof. The plan. It's a work of fucking _art_ , man."

Karkat sighs. "Alright. Whatever. Fine. What the fuck could possibly be this important about that cargo, anyway? You said you had insurance on it, didn't you? This is completely insane."

The corners of Dave's mouth quirk up. " _That_ , is none of your god damned business."

"Damn straight it's not."

They stare at each other. Dave leans forward, into the glow from the light on the table, and Karkat can just barely see the shadow of Dave's eyes, half-lidded under his shades. Warmth coils low in Karkat's abdomen. It's been a long time since anyone has looked at him this intently, actually _looked_ at him. He takes a breath.

"Fine. Sign me the fuck up. Just go ahead and rip out my soul and tack it to your wall, or whatever you people do with souls, I don't care. It's yours. I should probably be doomed to some kind of hell dimension for this, anyway."

Dave stares at him for a moment, lips slowly parting. "Oh, my god," he says, finally. "Oh my god. Thank you. Oh my god." He lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief. After a few moments of interfacing with his link a bubble appears on Karkat's, a gold-edged Business Agreement. Karkat squints at the wording of the contract, a mistrustful jut to his jaw.

"So I really do have the power to back out of this at any time? Even if it interferes with your 'time crunch'?"

"Obviously."

"And if _I_ get hijacked by the dersite mob?"

"Information about this run ain't gonna be on any list they monitor, so you won't, but you get paid, same as Nepeta. I mean. My runner. That got hijacked."

"And if your plan isn't such a 'foolproof' 'work of art'?"

"It says it right there in the contract. I'm not gonna fuck you over, dude."

Karkat gives a long sigh and pokes at the large red button reading "AGREE". A list reading "CONTRACTS" slides into view on the left hand side of Karkat's link, currently empty, and the bubble disappears and reappears there. Karkat swipes the whole thing out of his face. "Fine. Is your 'time crunch' going to allow me to get any sleep today?"

Dave looks absolutely delighted. He clasps his hands in front of him, an enormous grin on his face. "Oh my god. Thank you. Seriously. I'll send you the coordinates. You don't know how much this means to me. Uh. If you leave, uh, o-nine hundred hours, tomorrow? Should be fine."

"Fine."

They stare at each other. Dave's grin softens, turns lopsided. He drops his chin back into one hand. "So what's there to do around here, anyway? Now that all that shit's settled." He lifts his glass with his other hand and sips at some brown, carbonated drink through a straw.

"Uh. There's kind of a lot. In case you hadn't noticed."

Dave's glass meets the table. The shadows of his eyes flick back up to Karkat's. "Yeah, but. I mean. What do _you_ like to do?"

"Uh." Karkat can feel a blush creeping up his chest, up his neck. He hasn't even been back to the station in a quarter sweep. He starts rifling through memories of the last time he was here, and. Well. He probably spent more time frantically preparing for his next run than anything else. "I uh. Movies? There's a movie house I really like on tenth, they have good food, too..."

Dave is nodding, still giving that lopsided smile. "Wanna catch a movie later? I gotta play another set at nineteen hundred hours but like, after that...?"

Karkat chews at his lower lip. He tries to shove down images of the two of them in a private room, grinding against each other on a velvet sofa like desperate seven-sweep-olds. "Maybe so, if someone didn't just hire me right out of the fucking hangar and start going on and on about a 'time crunch'. There are about a million things I have to do now before I can leave."

"Aw," Dave says, slouching back down into the booth, legs extending all the way under Karkat's seat, his sunglasses reverting to infuriating and opaque outside the glow of the light on the table.

Karkat flops back into his side of the booth, too, arms crossed over his chest. "If we went to the movies would the shades come off?"

"Maybe."

"Can you even see anything right now?"

Dave gives him a huge shiteating grin. "No, not really. But this is my disguise." 

Karkat stares at him. "You look like an idiot."

"That's what makes it such a good disguise." Dave waggles his eyebrows.

 

Karkat wakes to the sight of his link pulsing dim blobs of color onto his visual cortex. They get brighter and brighter, faster and faster, until his head breaks the surface of his recuperacoon and he snarls, "Off!"

He hasn't had to set an alarm since the _last_ time he left on a run, and god damn is it putting him in a bad mood already. The sopor in this recuperacoon barely even did anything, either. It's probably way out of date, and he didn't even get as much sleep as he wanted, anyway -- he spent the rest of his waking period after he and Dave parted ways running errands. His payment from TASCo for his last job popped gloriously into his account as soon as the warehouse robots had checked in the last of his cargo, so he immediately applied for takeoff clearance at 0900 hours, then set off to do some shopping. Why not? It had been at least half a sweep since he'd bought any new clothes. Now was as good a time as any, right?

Karkat placed food orders via his link while staring at himself in the dressing room mirror. The pants he was trying on weren't the style he was used to, but they seriously felt like they were made to fit him, so he bought them anyway. Dave sent him the coordinates while he was trying on some new t-shirts, and he bought a few of those, too, as well as new shoes and a jacket that he thought had to be lined with the softest material imaginable. So what? Shit's nice.

He ate traditional Alternian cuisine at a street vendor's booth and downloaded a week's worth of movies: terran, alternian, post-alliance. He hadn't been able to afford _nearly_ enough new content to fill an entire quarter sweep during his last run, and boy did that shit get old. Never. Again.

Then it was back to A to make sure the food he ordered had been loaded and installed properly (it had), and that his ship was recharging properly (it was). He input the departure time and the coordinates Dave had given him and set up the ship's computer to plot the course. He paid 200 credits for a crew of maintenance robots to come and clean his ship inside and out, change the water purification filters, check the engine, run diagnostics on the internal computer system, replace his sopor slime, clean the couch, and fix that squeak in the command chair that had seriously been driving him nuts. If he was going to have to be in space again for a few more nights, it was not going to goddamn be in the kind of squalor he'd fallen into during the last few perigees of his last run.

So by the time all that was finished it had been close to 0300 hours and Karkat hadn't even been able to get to sleep until something closer to 0400 hours, his mind's eye irritatingly full of blond hair and a lopsided grin.

And well. The sooner this job is over the sooner he can put _that_ out of his head, too.

The water in the ablution trap of his rented hive is lukewarm and the spray is weak as hell, and Karkat wishes for the millionth time that he'd just gone and showered in his goddamn ship. He puts on some of his brand new clothes and sets off to C for breakfast.

APPARENTLY I'M CHRONICALLY UNABLE TO STICK TO MY PRINCIPLES FOR MORE THAN A COUPLE OF HOURS AT THE MOST BEFORE I END UP COMPLETELY FUCKING PROSTRATE BEFORE THE ALL POWERFUL GOD OF MONEY.  
I TOOK THE JOB.  
Y3S!! Y3S!!  
I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.  
Y3S K4RK4T 1 4M OBV1OUSLY H4PPY  
OR P3RH4PS 1 SHOULD S4Y R3L13V3D  
1 4LR34DY SP3NT MY CUT ON HUM4N C4ND13S 4ND ON3 4CTU4L L1V1NG B4BY DR4GON  
NO YOU DIDN'T.  
MY L1F3 1S COMPL3T3 NOW TH4NKS TO YOU >:]  
SHUT UP, YOU DID NOT.  
4R3 YOU C4LL1NG M3 4 LI4R??  
W4NT TO H4V3 BR34KF4ST 4ND F1ND OUT??? >:] > :] >:]  
1 H4V3NT 3V3N S33N YOU IN A QU4RT3R SW33P!  
UGH I WOULD EXCEPT I HAVE TO LEAVE IN LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF  
R34LLY?  
TH4T SOON  
>:[  
AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW THESE KINDS OF THINGS?  
SINCE YOU'RE, YOU KNOW,  
*MY FUCKING AGENT*??  
H3H3H3H3H3  
UGH.  
>:]  
YOUR CL13NT WOULDNT T3LL M3 4NYTH1NG!  
4LL 1 D1D W4S P4SS H1M 4LONG TO YOU  
WH4T K1ND OF 4SSHOL3 WOULD 1 B3 1F 1 D1DNT L3T YOU KNOW 4BOUT SUCH 4 T3MPT1NG F1N4NC14L D3C1S1ON  
1 WOULD B3 4 V3RY V3RY L4RG3 4SSHOL3 K4RK4T  
ALRIGHT ALRIGHT JESUS  
WHO 1S TH1S T3RR4N 4NYW4Y  
WH4TS H1S D34L  
T3LL M3 >:]  
THIS WHOLE THING IS A DISASTER. I DON'T EVEN WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.  
IT'S TOO HUMILIATING.  
COM3 ON!  
STOP B31NG SO OV3RDR4M4TIC 4ND T3LL M3!!  
HIS NAME'S DAVE STRIDER, HE NEEDS ME TO SHIP SOME CARGO, HE WON'T TELL ME WHAT IT IS, AND FOR SOME REASON I'M GOING ALONG WITH ALL OF THIS. HAPPY?  
W41T  
WHAT?  
D4V3 STR1D3R  
YOUR3 RUNN1NG C4RGO FOR D4V3 STR1D3R???  
K4RK4T???  
WHAT? SO?? IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN SOMETHING TO ME?  
HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO TH4T 1S??  
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! I DON'T KNOW?  
K4RK4T!!!!  
YOU KNOW WHAT? THIS IS REALLY STARTING TO PISS ME OFF.  
WHO FUCK1NG C4R3S >:O  
LOOK H1M UP  
LOOK H1M UP!!

Karkat rolls his eyes and draws a horizontal line through the air with one index finger. _Dave Strider_ , he types on the tabletop. Bubbles of information explode into his field of vision.

Oh.

Oh shit.

Holy fucking shit...

Pictures of Dave, professional photo shoots and tabloid snapshots alike, pepper the veritable onslaught of text:

_Dave Strider, one of the heirs of the intergalactic manufacturing corporation, Lalonde Research and Development (LRD) ..._

_Interview with Dave Strider ... new exclusive photos ..._

_Dave Strider And Jade Harley! Business Or Pleasure? ..._

_Guests are still arriving for the newest of Dave Strider's legendary parties, this time centered around the projected entrance of a large asteroid into the debris disk in Tau Ceti ..._

_Still no comment from CEO Lalonde regarding corporation heir Dave Strider ..._

_Rose Lalonde presided over the merger negotiations this week in Alpha Centauri ... Dave Strider not in attendance ..._

D1D YOU DO 1T  
D1D YOU LOOK H1M UP  
.........


	3. Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a continuation of the playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m44d6hsxcj4&list=PLpE0wKdqlpCS7PIf76Bp25dIYVZ4gBdoX&index=15)

It's a little before 0820 hours when Karkat arrives back in A, still reeling from all that information. He meant to leave earlier than he had and he'd just barely missed the train he'd meant to take. So now he's running even later, elbowing his way through the train station, then dodging between terrans and trolls in the lobby of the spaceport.

The nature of Karkat's work leaves him pretty far out of the loop when it comes to current events and pop culture. He gave up caring about that fact a long time ago, and anyway, he's a _troll_. He doesn't give a shit about the CEOs and heirs of the three terran corporations, categorically and on principle. But he still _knows_ about them. Everyone does.

Lalonde. Crocker. English.

How could anyone not? Those names are plastered on almost every god damned item in the galaxy. Pretty much the entirety of terran industry was divided like slices of pie between those families hundreds of sweeps ago. Ships, weapons, computer systems. Food production and replication. Energy and resource mining.

He's seen pictures of the heirs before. Everyone has. Karkat tries to remember specifics, but he can't. All of them always seemed more surreal than real, anyway. Beautiful. Flawless. Smooth, but brittle, like glass. He tries to reconcile that image with the very real, flesh and blood terran he sat across the table from the day before, and he can't.

Karkat's ship is in section Delta-7, hangar 56. Each of the spaceport domes, A and D, are also divided into fours: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Phi, Chi, Psi, and Omega, respectively. Each of those are divided further into 1-kilometer blocks, then further into 100 individual hangars. Karkat follows the dotted line provided by his link, stepping from one moving sidewalk to another, robots whizzing back and forth with cargo on the ground below him.

He can't believe this.

There's no question, though. It was him in those pictures. Same build, same posture, same crooked, shiteating grin.

It's too fucking absurd.

He needs to get a grip. It's almost 0835, but at least he's almost back to his hangar, now. The moving sidewalk he's standing on isn't going nearly fast enough, so he starts to walk, quickly, backpack bouncing against his lower back, hand skimming over the rubbery plastic of the rail. It's a lot less crowded out in the depths of the hangars, but he still has to step around a few trolls and a couple of terrans. He needs to get a grip, board his ship, do the run, then everything can go back to normal.

0840\. The number of his hangar is coming up. He steps off onto the next exit and into the dim hallway that leads into his hangar, then onto the walkway that connects with the door to the living quarters of his ship. It's alright. He made it on time. He still has plenty of time to board and wait around for Station Departures to grant him clearance to take...off...

"'Sup," Dave says from the floor, propped up against the hull of _his ship_ , one arm resting on a large duffel bag, a sleeping bag under the other. His long legs are askew on the treaded metal of the walkway.

Karkat stops dead in his tracks. "What the complete fuck are you doing here?" It's barely a question.

"Catching a ride to Sirius?" That lopsided grin is back. The shades are still on. Karkat drags a hand down his face. All the mental images of picture perfect heirs swirling in his head evaporate like spilled soda on an Alternian sidewalk at midday.

"Did I somehow just _miss_ this part of the contract?"

"Nope." Dave stands, hoists his bags over his shoulders. "This would just be a favor."

"Absolutely not."

"Please?" The note of desperation in Dave's voice is so obviously put on but it _still_ makes something twist agreeably in Karkat's middle. Or is there any way he could just write that off as a particularly sharp stab of annoyance?

Karkat gestures helplessly at nothing. 0845. "I don't have time for this. Fine. Fine. Just get on, you extortionist piece of fuck."

Dave's eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline and he grins, trapping his lower lip for a moment between his teeth. "Aye, aye, captain."

When Karkat flops down into his command chair the display lights up, floor to ceiling, instantly recognizing the unique output stream of his neural link. It's set to his usual background, a clock showing the Standard Galactic Time floating over a panorama of an Alternian plain at night, twin moons nestled into the thick, twinkling band of the Galaxy. He presses a button under the armrest of his chair and the seat reclines back. Holy fuck, that godawful squeak really is gone. Thank. The fucking. Empress.

"Where should I sleep?" Dave calls, and Karkat peers back across the room around the side of his headrest. Dave is looking through the door to the bridge, bags still over his shoulders.

"In the hold," Karkat shoots back. "Or outside." Dave scoffs, then laughs. "Use the couch downstairs. I don't give a shit."

"Thanks, dude." And he's gone.

0850 hours. Ten minutes until takeoff. A countdown initiated by Station Departures begins on his viewscreen, with directions to start his engines. Karkat waves at the screen, and after a few more last-minute diagnostic scans, he twists and pokes at virtual controls until the ship's engine begins to hum under his feet.

This is a disaster.

The engines spin up completely, still little more than a faint purr under his living quarters, but Karkat knows the feeling and the sound better than most beings know the thrum of their own bloodpushers.

His entire plan is now completely useless. Get a grip? Yeah fucking right.

There's a pretty large part of his thinkpan writhing in joy over the fact that Dave's coming with him, and he wants to choke that part of himself into oblivion. He doesn't need this shit in his life. He'd just been starting to not exactly mind being single. Appreciate it, even. All his past relationships have been disasters, start to finish. He doesn't need this shit.

Karkat takes a deep breath, staring at the timer, counting down, one second at a time. Alright. So he doesn't need it, but he's starting to _want_ it, all the way down to his core. His body is a fucking traitor, is what it is. Even just thinking about their _conversations_ makes his breath catch, makes his pulse quicken, in a way nothing has in _ages_ and...

Dave _had_ been flirting with him, right?

He had to be.

_Dave Strider, one of the heirs of the intergalactic manufacturing corporation ..._

He _had_ to be...

Right?

He...

None of this makes...any sense.

Fuck.

...Fuck.

The longer Karkat thinks about it the less sure he gets. Yesterday he was sure there'd been a spark in the air between them, and it had been electric. Urgent. Inevitable. _Pitch_. And it's not like terrans never get involved in quadrants with trolls. Some of them even get involved in quadrants with each other, now. But most of them still don't have the the cultural foundation to understand what certain signals given at certain times actually mean...

This is why interspecies hookups are a terrible idea, Karkat reminds himself, mortifying memories of the last time plummeting his insides down to his feet. And terrans that flirt black are almost always trying to scratch some itch that Karkat doesn't really quite understand. It's not kismesissitude that they're after, not really.

He lets his head hit the back of his headrest and stares off into nothing. 0855 hours.

It's just so humiliating. Karkat knows himself. Knows he has a type. There's a specific kind of body type and personality that gets under his skin in a way that makes him two thousand kinds of desperate. But it's always a disaster, every single fucking time. He shouldn't be looking for anything right now. Maybe ever, because he's been down this road enough times to know how it's going to end.

Karkat knows that flirting with Dave the night before was already taking it a step too far, and he wants to kick his past self right in the teeth for ever allowing his thinkpan to relinquish all decision making to his fucking nook.

Ugh.

"Got anywhere for me to strap in while we take off?" Dave asks from the doorway, out of breath from climbing the stairs. Karkat turns one palm face up and raises his arm, pulling up one of the ships menus on the viewscreen. He pokes at the release for one of the passenger seats currently stowed under the floor of the bridge, and he hears it raise and unfold. There's a rustle of Dave sitting, and the click of his safety belt. Karkat's not even going to turn around. Nope. He'll just have to spend the rest of this trip ignoring Dave's existence as much as possible. Yes, he's acting like he's two sweeps old. Who fucking cares.

Karkat fastens his belt, too, and the countdown on the screen reaches zero and the ship lifts off.

He switches the view to his external cameras once again, and the door of the hangar falls away, the station filling his screen. Everything's alright. He can relax. There's nothing he has to _do_ , not anymore, not for two whole nights. The station slowly shrinks to the size of a toy. Karkat sighs as the ship turns and the station is completely replaced by the blackness of space. The concept of "two whole nights" expands to forty-eight-point-seven-two hours, then to two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-twenty-three minutes and...

He can't fucking _believe_ he's out here. Again.

Dave's presence fills the space behind him like a bad omen.

Get a fucking grip.

Finally, the bright red text reading "STATION DEPARTURES OVERRIDE" across the top of the screen blinks out, and they're off with a flick of Karkat's wrist.

It doesn't matter how many times Karkat makes the jump to FTL, it still turns his gastric sac inside-out. He shuts off the cameras and sets the display back to the default screen, fighting off a wave of nausea. Once they reach cruising speed he'll be fine, it's just the acceleration, and, to a smaller degree, the deceleration, that makes him feel like his internal organs are trying to crawl mutinously out of his mouth.

"Ho-ly shit," Dave is saying from the passenger seat. "Wow, dude, do you seriously have to deal with this every time?"

Karkat snaps his seat back into the upright position and spins around, baring his teeth. Ugh. The spinning. Did not help. "Fuck you, not everyone can afford million credit g dampeners."

Dave shrugs with an innocent smile. "Just sayin'."

"What, never been on a cargo ship before?" Karkat taunts.

"Sure I have. This one's just the worst."

"Good. Serves you right for making me give you a ride."

"I didn't 'make' you do shit. Not my fault you find me so irresistible."

Despite his continuing low-key nausea, heat hits Karkat low in the abdomen. Jesus fucking christ. "I'm so happy you're here to help me through this crisis. It's not easy finding out you have a thing for aliens with the total combined intellect of my left ass cheek."

Dave's eyes light up. His grin widens. "Dude. Every word that comes out of your mouth is like a fucking symphony."

"You have shit taste in music, then," Karkat says, leaning his head gingerly back against his headrest, shutting his eyes, swallowing heavily. They'll stop accelerating any time now and he'll start feeling better. Any time.

"Are you _airsick_ right now?" Dave asks, a note of wonder in his voice that makes Karkat want to sink all the way down through the hull of his ship and out into space.

"No. Fuck you."

"Wow, that...sucks."

Karkat's eyes snap open. "Uh..."

"I mean. Since this is your job and everything." Dave is ducking over the armrest of his chair, feeling around under the seat, probably looking for the button to make it recline.

Karkat's entire thinkpan is flatlining. "It's just for...the, uh. Acceleration." This is the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to him. "Shut up."

"Nah," Dave says, finally finding the button and kicking back, folding his hands over his chest.


	4. Movie Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [more playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZbgyKJkHxQ&list=PLpE0wKdqlpCS7PIf76Bp25dIYVZ4gBdoX&index=17)
> 
> also by the way this chapter is def nsfw

Weightless. His recuperacoon? Oh yeah. He's supposed to be...back in space...where...wait...where is he?

Karkat is floating, mind fuzzy and mussed from sopor. He drags himself up and out of his recuperacoon, and OK. OK. He _is_ back on his ship, back on a run, and...

Dave is downstairs.

That's right, Karkat remembers as he stumbles into his ablution block. He'd just gone straight back to sleep after the ship reached cruising speed. He'd been exhausted. Sick. Trying to avoid Dave like the plague.

Karkat laughs into his hands, hot water pelting his hair. _Wow_ was that new slime stronger than his old slime. Brand new. Un, used. His mind is still floating like he's half asleep. Why is he so worried about this shit, again, anyway? He knows Dave wants to fuck. Dave knows he wants to fuck. What exactly is stopping them, again?

Dave _just_ wants to fuck, probably, that's why. Dave is rich enough, famous enough that he can have pretty much anyone, any time, Karkat is sure. If he and Karkat had never met it would just be someone else. Dave doesn't want to be anybody's kismesis. And even if he did, would it seriously be _Karkat_ that he'd be after? A mutant lowblood who can only afford to keep his engines running by signing up for the longest, shittiest jobs available? Dave's never had to worry about _shit_. He's never had his account fall into single digits, never had to put the needs of his ship above the nutritional requirements of his own body, because without a ship, he'd _never_ get to eat?

And now Dave thinks he can just waltz into his life, throw around a completely _implausible_ amount of money like it's chunks of fresh grubloaf to a hoard of featherbeasts, then expect a ride _and_ sex, to boot?

Ohhh. Wow. Holy _shit_ does Dave piss him off. Karkat slides a hand over his stomach and down, down to press over the heat already building between his legs.

"Hey," Dave says from the couch when Karkat tromps into the kitchen in a shitty bathrobe. Why should he even bother to get properly dressed? He doesn't give a fuck anymore. He's given up all hope in life.

The shades are off, now, folded into the front collar of Dave's t-shirt. His eyes are half-lidded and Karkat knows he shouldn't be surprised by the shape of them, not now that he's seen pictures. But fuck. Fuck Dave Strider sideways and upside-down for having such a symmetrical face.

"Don't even talk to me," Karkat announces, poking at the display on the food replicator. He chooses coffee from his favorites menu. Medium roast. Black. Best contribution by terrans to the universe at large, in Karkat's opinion.

Dave snorts. He's half in his sleeping bag, leaning up against the arm of the couch. He's looking generally greasy and rumpled, and that fact is already improving Karkat's mood. "Got any human recipes in that thing besides coffee? I am _starving_. Or am I gonna be eating pureed bug faces this whole trip?"

"Look for yourself," Karkat shoots back. He blows over the surface of his coffee. "I'm sure there's some plate of unfertilized ovum topped with curdled mammal secretions in there somewhere."

Dave laughs, his nose crinkling. "And where's the shower? Man I haven't even had one since before I got to Kuiper, uh, day before yesterday? Maybe?"

"Ugh." Karkat sinks down into one of the chairs at the table. "That's disgusting. You're disgusting. It's one floor up. First door on the left."

Dave does a jaunty little two-fingered salute, stands, and lets his sleeping bag drop to the floor. Karkat realizes a moment too late that the pair of jeans kicked over Dave's duffel bag at the end of the couch _were_ in fact the ones he'd been. Wearing.

"Nice." Karkat sips at his coffee.

"You expect me to sleep in jeans? Nobody sleeps in jeans." Dave is bending over to grab his duffel bag and his ass makes a downright sinful curve under the thin fabric of his briefs. "That's like, one of those unspoken rules. You know. Exceptions to common decency."

"No it isn't." Dave throws him a grin over one shoulder. "Whatever. You just better not use my shampoo." 

Dave waggles his eyebrows as he heads for the stairs.

Karkat is halfway through his own breakfast (frosted grubloaf and a cup of strawberry flavored grub whip, _Dave_ ) when Dave comes back downstairs in a new t-shirt and sweatpants, looking entirely blissful and full of shit.

"Thanks, man, I needed that. Like. So bad." He crosses over to the replicator and pokes around on it for a while, before deciding on what turns out to be coffee and one of those terran grain paste dishes. He sits across from Karkat at the table. Steam rises from his bowl. "So what do you do? You know. Around your ship?"

Karkat shrugs. "Eat. Sleep. Watch movies." 

"So are you like, really really into movies?"

Karkat stares at him. "What? Why?"

Dave shrugs, stirring his grain paste, eyes on his bowl. "I dunno, last night you said your favorite thing to do in town was to go watch movies at this one place so that's like, the only personal fact I know about you right now." He lets his breakfast alone for a moment and takes an experimental sip of coffee.

"Yeah, I guess." Karkat thinks for a moment. "There isn't exactly a lot of shit for me to do when I'm out in space."

"Yeah, I can get that." Dave starts poking around at his food, pushing it all meticulously out of the center, up the sides of his bowl. "How long do you get to spend on the station? Between runs?"

"It depends. Last time it was something like twenty days. This time _was_ going to be half a sweep." Dave's eyes flick up and he grins. "And now I'm not actually sure what I'm going to do. Yet. Your. Eyes."

"Hmm? Oh. Yeah." Dave rolls them and drops them back to his food. He lifts a spoonful and blows over it.

"I've just never _met_...they're like _mine_." Karkat leans forward over the table, looking into Dave's face, his own eyes like saucers.

Dave's eyes flick back up to Karkat's from under his lashes. "Oh, so you didn't look up any pics of me last night? I don't know, should I be feeling insulted right now?"

"Shut up, of _course_ I did, I just didn't see any close...ups."

Dave is laughing at him. Karkat flushes and flops back in his seat. "How far down the rabbit hole did you go? Did you find any of the _really_ good stuff? You should try to look _that_ shit up, dude." Dave waggles his eyebrows.

"Hmm." Karkat narrows his eyes. "Am I going to have to?"

Dave snickers into his bowl. He covers his mouth with one hand, swallowing, finally, with difficulty. "Uh! Maybe, uh, not." He laughs again, and there's a low edge to it that makes Karkat's bloodpusher thump. "So you know about my family, then?"

"A little, I guess."

"You would not believe the shit they're into," Dave says, his eyes flicking back up, and he gestures back and forth between ruby red irises as if in explanation. "Genetics is just the tip of the iceberg, dude."

Karkat holds his gaze. "Mine are just a mutation."

"But there are like, billions of alternians with red eyes."

Karkat narrows his. "Not like these. My blood's red like yours."

"Oh," Dave says, and his mouth stays rounded for a beat or two. "Huh."

"What were you doing in a shitty disguise on my station?" Karkat asks, and Dave laughs aloud.

"Looking for you."

"Get that shit out of here." They exchange a look. Dave's eyelashes are long. Light brown.

"Was it hard for you? Growing up?"

 

"Yeah." Karkat shrugs. He spoons up the last of his grub whip and brings it to his lips. "Yeah, it was." He licks it off the spoon. "So are you going to be some big shot CEO some day?"

Dave laughs again, sharp this time. "Fuck no. What's your favorite movie?"

Karkat snorts, and levels a long look across the table. "It's alternian. You don't want to hear the title."

"Wanna watch it?" Dave is looking at him from underneath his lashes, chin in one hand.

"Sure. Whatever."

It's pretty much torture.

They sit together on the couch. Karkat casts the movie onto the screen on the opposite wall, the lights dimmed to 50%, and the next two and a half hours make him want to launch screaming out of his skin and burn up on reentry into the atmosphere of the nearest planetary body.

He can't believe he sat so fucking far away from Dave on the couch.

No, no. No. Karkat is supposed to _not_ be thinking about things like the distance between his hand and Dave's thigh. He's supposed to _not_ be imagining what it would feel like if he were to swing one knee over Dave's lap and _grind down_. He tries to lose himself in the movie, but that backfires completely when he remembers way, way too late that this movie is probably his favorite because of what is possibly the hottest blackrom scene ever recorded in the history of movies. 

Karkat stays perfectly stock still. He's not going to shift in his seat, he's not going to fucking cross his thighs. No matter how much he...wants, to. Heat throbs between his legs, at the images on the screen, yes, but more at the humiliating fact that he's pretty much just handing a detailed list of things he's into directly to someone he's still trying desperately to convince himself he's not actually going to sleep with.

When the movie is over Karkat practically launches himself off the couch and heads for the replicator. He needs water, he needs something, anything.

He chugs an entire glassful. Dave comes up behind him.

"Ooh, can I get something?"

"Knock yourself out." Karkat shoves his glass through the reclamation slot beside the replicator, and Dave flips through menus. Karkat watches him drink some unidentified fruit drink, shoulder against the wall, trying not to get too excited about what's becoming a pretty severe lack of personal space between them. He can feel the heat radiating off Dave's body.

"What do you wanna do now?" Dave asks, pushing his empty glass through the reclamation slot, too. He doesn't move away. "I'd be cool with another movie. Shit's been kind of crazy the last couple of days. It's actually really nice to be able to just...chill."

Karkat shrugs. "Yeah. Sure." They look at each other, again, for a few beats too long. 

Dave moves first, back toward the couch. Karkat follows. Dave sits on the left side, close to the middle, and Karkat sits beside him, a handsbreadth between their shoulders. "Do I get to request shit?" Dave asks, slouching down until his head is resting on the back cushion.

"I don't care, whatever." Dave crosses his ankles, heels on the coffee table. "Get your feet off the table, asshole."

Fifty-five minutes later, they're both slouched way, way down on the couch, feet on the table, and the movie Dave is casting is devolving into the most explicit sex scene Karkat has ever seen in a terran movie with an actual plot. He sneaks a glance over at Dave. The corner of his mouth is turned up. Dave catches him looking, smile widening into a grin, and Karkat snaps his attention back to the screen.

Oh, fuck.

This is actually.

Outrageously hot.

Karkat's pulse actually quickens, and he tries desperately to keep his breaths steady. This is fucking ridiculous. The fact that Dave is clearly now viewing this as some sort of competition hits Karkat hard and low, and heat flames over his face at the way his breath audibly catches. He glances over at Dave again. Dave catches Karkat's eyes, trapping his own lower lip between his teeth, and they share a long, heated look. Karkat tears his eyes away first, letting out a shaky breath.

They eat sandwiches afterwards and argue about whether or not the ending of the movie was any good, shins brushing under the table. Karkat chooses next, and a minute or so into the shamelessly graphic sex scene he'd picked the movie for Dave takes an audible breath and lets it out, unsteady. He puts his feet back on the floor and crosses his legs.

Oh, _fuck_.

Yes. Yes.

Karkat can't help but smirk, and he glances over at Dave out of the corner of his eye. Dave's chest is rising and falling rapidly, and he lets his head fall to the side, eyes finding Karkat's, unfocused and _hot_. They stare at each other for a long time, and arousal begins to throb again between Karkat's legs at the _look_ in Dave's eyes, at the helpless line of his throat, at the pink flash of his tongue over his lips.

But. Not yet.

Karkat smirks and turns his attention back to the screen, smug as fuck over the tiny, desperate noise that drags out of Dave.

"Wait, hold on, who was that dude at the end again?" Dave asks when the movie is over.

"Her _boss_ , he was in the beginning? Remember?" Karkat rolls his head toward Dave on the back of the couch, a skeptical twist to his mouth.

"Nope." Dave's eyes are half-lidded. His lips are parted, just a little. "What did he do again?"

Karkat drags a hand over his face. "The entire plot of the fucking _movie_ was based around that shit in the beginning, I..." He levels Dave with a glare. "Forget it. Jesus christ."

Dave shrugs. "So, hey, uh." The corner of Dave's mouth quirks up. "Do you wanna fuck?"

Karkat's breath catches. His pulse throbs between his legs.

"Fuck," Dave breathes, eyes widening. "Your pupils just uh..." He closes one fist and opens it, thumb and forefinger in the shape of a widening circle. "That seemed good. Right?"

"Sure."

"Sure it's good or sure you wanna fuck?"

"Both," Karkat growls, and they stare at each other for one shivery, breathless moment before Karkat is curling toward Dave on the couch, grabbing him by the front of the shirt and hauling him in. Dave laughs, low, and slides a hand over Karkat's waist, over the small of his back, and their mouths meet, slick and urgent.

"You are so fucking hot," Dave mumbles into the kiss. "I didn't know how much more I could take of, uh..." He groans, head falling to the side, hand gripping at Karkat's hip, dragging down over his thigh. "That tension was so thick I was fucking suffocating, man."

"You used my fucking shampoo, didn't you?" Karkat grinds out, in between sucking kisses to the column of Dave's throat.

Dave laughs, delighted. "Obviously."

Karkat throws his legs over Dave's thighs and slides completely into his lap. Dave groans, one hand squeezing at Karkat's hip, the other arm going tightly around his waist. He grinds up against Karkat's thigh, and the _noise_ he makes sends another sharp bolt of pleasure straight down through Karkat's middle. He's hard. Karkat can feel it through the fabric of his sweatpants, and damn if there isn't something somewhat appealing about human physiology. Karkat had almost forgotten. He grinds down with his ass and Dave pants into his neck.

"Ohhh, god _damn_ ," Dave is murmuring, hands roaming, squeezing. Karkat reaches over to the arm of the couch and presses the button that makes it slowly fold back and flatten out. Dave's eyes widen as he slowly tips backwards. Karkat stays upright in his lap. "Oh my god. Why didn't you tell me it does this? It would've been _so_ much better to sleep on. Earlier."

"You didn't ask." Karkat drops his robe and tosses it to one side. Dave runs eager hands over his tank top, up his chest, over his bare shoulders. Karkat grabs Dave's wrists in his hands, shoves them down to either side of his head. Dave groans and thrusts against him.

"Oh my god. Take off the rest of your clothes, _please_. It's like, a necessity for me at this point."

Karkat raises an eyebrow. "And why exactly should I take orders from you?"

Dave makes a strangled sound. "Please? I said please, I can say it again, though, please, please, please..."

Something powerful swells in Karkat's chest. He wants to _wreck_ Dave, smash him to bits, laugh in the rubble. "Alright."

He stands, turns his back, pulls his tank top off over his head. He angles a glance at Dave over one shoulder, and Dave is still lying exactly as he left him, hands to either side of his head. There's an obvious tent in the front of his sweatpants. Karkat shoves his own pants down over his hips and kicks them under the coffee table.

"Take your clothes off, too," Karkat demands, turning back around, arms crossed. Dave's eyes rake up his body.

"Yeah, OK." He squirms out of his shirt and tosses it over the side of the couch, then does the same with his pants. "Happy?"

Fuck. "Maybe."

"Ever been with a terran before?"

"Yep." Karkat straddles Dave's thighs.

"How was it?" Dave drags a hand over Karkat's side to his front, then down between his legs. "Oh my god...you're so wet..."

"It was, objectively...terrible," Karkat answers, rocking his hips down onto Dave's hand. His bulge is swelling under the pressure of Dave's fingertips. "Though there...were. Enjoyable, parts."

"Oh, really?" Dave looks up at Karkat, eyes half-lidded. "Wanna give me any specifics?"

"I liked it when he'd shut the fuck up and choke on my bulge," Karkat growls. Dave's eyes go unfocused. "Don't ask people about exes while you're fucking...jerking them off..."

"I just wanna know what I'm up against here," Dave says with a grin. "And, dude, you are so. Well. The idea of you fucking _anyone_ turns me on so bad..."

A blush flames up Karkat's chest to his hairline and he really can't tell if he should be feeling insulted or complimented but either way his insides are turning to fire. "Shut up."

Dave's fingers press deeper, _deeper_ , his thumb sliding unbearably slowly over the tip of Karkat's bulge. Karkat lets out a choked sob, his nook clenching in a slow undulation around Dave's fingers, his pulse pounding, his bulge extending fully into Dave's waiting hands.

"Aw, yeah," Dave breathes. "Fuck, man." Karkat's cheeks are burning. He's panting, hands over his own face. "Come here, oh god, do you really wanna make me shut up, or what...?"

" _Fuck_ , oh..." Dave pulls out his fingers, drops his hands, and Karkat crawls up his body, lining his bulge up with Dave's waiting tongue. Dave sucks him down, cheeks hollowing, and Karkat grabs a handful of his hair, holding his head in place as he rocks his hips forward.

Dave grabs onto his ass with a long, gratified moan, throat spasming around the tip of his bulge, and Karkat's life is fucking over.


	5. Show Me Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uhh nsfw for this one too

When Karkat wakes up, nothing makes sense. His pan grasps uselessly at half-remembered snippets of bad dreams. Bad dreams? No wonder, he thinks. He's not in his recuperacoon. He must have fallen asleep out on the...couch.

He sits up with a start. His head had been pillowed on Dave's shoulder, his bathrobe over the two of them like a blanket. Karkat doesn't really remember dimming the lights, but he must have. Dave hums, a little questioning noise, and Karkat lets out a long breath, arousal and...guilt mixing inside him at how much of a _mess_ Dave looks.

Even in the low light Karkat can see the shadows of bite marks down his neck and across his shoulders, of claw marks down his chest. Karkat knows for a fact that there are more on his back. Which are probably worse.

_Fuck_ , he looks...Karkat needs to...

"Morning, sunshine," Dave mumbles, one hand finding Karkat's knee, sliding up to rest at the crease of his thigh. "What time is it?"

Karkat checks. "Almost eleven hundred." He's not going to freak out.

"Aw, come on, let's go back to sleep, I'm not getting out of bed if it's only 'almost' eleven hundred, jesus."

"I'm turning the lights on." He's not going to freak out.

"Oh, come on, dude..."

Karkat calls up the ship's menu on his link and brings the lights up to 80%. "We didn't even clean up last night. This is disgusting."

Dave groans and throws an arm over his eyes. "Don't care." 

He's not going to freak out. "No, you're going to come up fucking stairs with me and take a god damned shower."

He's freaking out.

He eventually gets Dave off the couch and drags him up the stairs by the arm. Dave's eyes widen when he catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror and Karkat averts his eyes, leans behind the shower curtain to turn on the water.

"Fuck, man," Dave says, almost in awe, trying to twist enough in the mirror to get a good look at the marks on his back. He turns around, dropping his head to one side, then the other, getting a better look at his neck. He has a set of four evenly spaced scratches, too, raw and red, over each of his hip bones.

"Get in the fucking shower," Karkat says, his voice high and strange. He yanks the shower curtain to one side.

Dave turns away from the mirror, moves closer, curls his hands around Karkat's upper arms. His thumbs brush over Karkat's skin. "Dude, are you OK?"

Karkat narrows his eyes, anger swelling in his chest. "Yes. Fine. Absolutely fine."

"What's up?" Dave asks, one hand moving up and over Karkat's shoulder, sliding up to cup his cheek. 

Karkat's thoughts stutter, his anger almost completely derailed. He ducks away from Dave's hands and steps into the shower, face burning. When Dave steps in with him Karkat grabs him by the arms and positions him under the spray.

"Seriously. What's up?" Dave tries to turn around but Karkat won't let him. He squirts soap into his hand and smears it roughly over Dave's back. Dave hisses, and Karkat turns him back under the water.

"Nothing is 'up'."

"Yeah fucking right."

Karkat grits his teeth, turning Dave around by the shoulders, and silently gives his front the same treatment.

"If it's about this," Dave gestures at his neck and chest, "I think if you asked around I'd probably be the last person to be upset about it, dude."

Karkat glares at him, baring his teeth. "There's nothing wrong."

"I mean, if you haven't noticed yet? I sort of get off on shit like this."

"Uh huh." Karkat's eyes narrow.

"And like. Even if I didn't. I mean. These," he says, crooking a thumb at his back, "are just gonna make me think of you riding the fuck out of me and these," he gestures at his hips, "are just gonna make me think of you fucking the brains right the fuck out of my skull. Like. I don't even know if I got them all back in right, that's how fucking incredible it was."

Karkat takes a shaky breath as the image flares in his mind: Dave face down, begging into the cushion, barely coherent, as Karkat fucks him, hot and slick and about five steps past intense. Karkat is momentarily humiliated by the predictable rush of heat that crashes over him. He runs a hand over his face and drops it back to his side, feeling frustrated and desperate all at once.

"So it's cool. We're cool, right?" Dave runs a fingertip down the line of Karkat's jaw and back up, and Karkat can't get enough air.

"I don't know. Have we ever been 'cool'?" Karkat says with exaggerated air quotes, a note of hysteria in his voice. His bloodpusher is pounding, and not in a good way. Maybe it'll just explode right out of his chest, and he'll never have to deal with any of this ever again.

Dave pulls Karkat under the spray. Hot water pelts his hair, and Karkat squeezes his eyes shut. "I hope so, I mean, I know what I had going on last night was pretty far beyond the domain of just 'cool,' so." His hands leave Karkat's shoulders, then return to his head a few moments later, covered in shampoo. He expertly works Karkat's hair into a lather, blunt nails like heaven against Karkat's scalp, around the bases of his horns. "It seemed like you were there with me too, I mean, both of us wandering out into the uncharted lands of maybe something a little beyond just 'cool'?"

Karkat can barely think. "Y-yeah." He needs to tell Dave to stop. It's a terran thing. It doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to Karkat. He doesn't know that he shouldn't...be...doing this shit. "OK, OK, good enough, that's good enough." He bats Dave's hands away from his head.

They finish the rest of their shower in silence, and Karkat escapes into his closet while Dave is blowdrying his hair.

There's no reason to panic.

Karkat pulls on underwear, socks, a shirt, and pants, automatically, in that order. Seriously. No reason. Dave is just doing all those usual affectionate terran things, and that _feeling_ he had when he first saw Dave after waking up is actually completely understandable within the quadrant system. Caring for a potential kismesis is expected. The fact that you do is obviously what makes it romantic hate instead of platonic hate. So. It's been awhile since he was last involved with a terran, and seeing Dave's skin get marked up so easily was just a shock. Karkat doesn't want Dave to _actually_ get hurt. It's totally normal.

It doesn't mean anything.

When he gets downstairs Dave is already at the replicator, in sweatpants and a tank top.

"Fuck, are we actually getting dressed today?" Dave says over one shoulder.

Karkat shrugs.

"Eh. Whatever. I guess being able to work in pyjamas loses its novelty after a while, anyway." He turns and continues poking around at different food options. "At least. That's what I hear. I don't know about for me, though, I don't know if I'd be able to resist the temptation to be a complete fucking slob all the time. Like. I barely resist it as it is, you know? Uh. I'm sure you hear shit like that all the time." He turns around with a plate and a mug, both steaming. "Speaking of resisting allure, I know I couldn't resist the allure of unfertilized ovum," he says, lifting his plate a little with a lopsided grin.

"Gross." The corners of Karkat's mouth are turning up. Without his permission. He moves closer to the table.

"This is replicator food! It's not even like this was actually ejected from the nether regions of some bird," Dave says, setting down his coffee and lifting up a forkful of egg. It's yellow. Rubbery. Ugh. "Come on, have you ever even had scrambled eggs? This is like, a first class delicacy of my people, dude."

Karkat rolls his eyes. "Shut up. I know what it is."

"Yeah, but have you ever _had_ any?" Dave wiggles the fork. The egg also wiggles.

"No, because it looks like something someone scraped out of their hear ducts."

Dave cracks up. "Yeah, OK, I'll give you that, I guess!" He eats the egg off the fork. "If you try this I'll eat whatever weird alternian shit you want."

Karkat narrows his eyes.

"Come on! I'm serious."

"Fine, fine." Karkat crosses his arms. "Bring it the fuck on." Dave spears another chunk of egg and lifts it toward Karkat's mouth. Karkat bites it off the fork.

He shrugs. "Wow, it's virtually tasteless. What a fantastic fucking culinary voyage _that_ was."

"Aw, come on!" Dave laughs. "It has a taste! Just like. An egg taste."

"Did you think you were going to convert me or something?" Karkat reaches around Dave and taps at the interface on the replicator. Dave steps to the side. "I guess the texture wasn't completely horrible, but if that's the best you've got to offer...?"

"You know what I got to offer," Dave says right in Karkat's ear, and Karkat throws him a smug smile over his shoulder. "Maybe you just don't have a sophisticated enough palette, huh? Ever think of that? But come on. Show me yours. Bring it."

Karkat flips through the menus, swiping through dish after dish, trying to think of what would most upset someone's terran sensibilities. Dave leans against the wall next to him, eating the rest of his eggs, smiling to himself.

"Oh my god." Dave breaks into a huge grin when Karkat finally turns toward him with a plate. "Oh my god, dude. That is incredible. Look at this shit."

There are two spiders on their backs on the plate, each the size of a hand. Their legs curl inward, segmented, preserved perfectly in a cast of glorious deep fried batter. A cup of grubsauce rests between their abdomens.

"So do I just like," Dave's hand hovers over the plate, "break off a leg and start snacking?"

"Yep." Karkat can feel the corners of his mouth turning up. Dave does exactly that, not breaking eye contact for a moment as he brings one deep fried leg to his mouth, chews, and swallows.

"Hey, man, it's good, that's like, fucking, top notch crisp. Not much of a taste other than grubsauce and fried, though."

"Hmm. Well. Maybe you don't have a sophisticated enough palette."

Dave snickers and breaks off another leg.

They curl up together on the couch after breakfast and put on another movie, another one of Karkat's favorites. It has a stunning example of a character with full quadrants, as well as the perfectly balanced push and pull of vacillation, between pale and flushed, and between flushed and caliginous. The characters move around each other like flawless clockwork, and Karkat fucking loves it.

"Man. I love alternian movies," Dave says, hand resting on Karkat's lower abdomen. "All that pale shit is hot as hell."

Karkat throws a look back at Dave, nose crinkling. "What?"

Dave laughs, and there's a sharp edge to it. "Sorry. I'm probably way off base here, but like, it would be so hot? To have someone that like. Takes care of you and shit."

"It's not 'hot.' That's the whole point."

"Maybe for you," Dave says with a little smirk, then squeezes Karkat around the middle when Karkat doesn't tease back. "Hey, sorry. I know cultural insensitivity is like, a good eighty percent of our thing, but let me know if I go too far, OK?"

"Ugh. Just. Watch the movie." Karkat snuggles down farther into Dave's chest, face flaming hot.

"I don't know. I never thought to ask before but I guess like, when you're pale for someone is it more like they're family or something? Like, the idea of fucking them is just downright repulsive? Though I guess like. There wouldn't be so much quadrant flipping if that were true all the time. Maybe?"

Now would be a good time for the universe to fucking explode. Now would be a good time. Now.

Ugh.

"If you must know, yes, it feels wrong to think of a moirail in a sexual way. Unless it doesn't, and if it doesn't, you're not in the right quadrant."

"But there have gotta be all kinds of moirails that fuck. Or is that just me talking? With my, you know, 'oversexed terran mind'?" Karkat can practically hear the scare quotes.

Karkat shrugs, face still burning. "If they fuck, they're not moirails."

"Hmm."

"Not while they're feeling flushed. If this hypothetical relationship is an example of stable quadrant vacillation, they're matesprits while they're feeling flushed and moirails while they're feeling pale."

"Is it seriously that cut and dry? Seems like it would be messier. Like. Way messier."

"If it's messy you're not doing it right."

"Hmm." Dave considers this. "What if I like it messy?"

Karkat's face is probably hot enough now to fry up one of those unfertilized ovum. He hates how fast his bloodpusher is pumping, how heat is coiling low in his abdomen, right under the light pressure of Dave's hand. "Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Probably not." Dave grins and nuzzles his ear, lips pressing against the shell of it, against his jaw, against his throat. "Talk to me more about romance. I think it makes you extra horny."

"No, it doesn't, _you_ do," Karkat shoots back, then groans and smacks a hand over his eyes.

Dave is completely insufferable after that. "Mmh, talk to me, babe," he groans when Karkat is situated completely in his lap, thighs tight around his middle. They rock together, and Karkat really wishes he'd already taken off his pants. He can still feel Dave underneath him, though, hard against the seam of his jeans, against the slick slit of his nook. "Tell me about how horny I make you, and why. A hundred words or less. Or more. Please."

"You don't do anything for the right reasons," Karkat grinds out, pulling Dave's head back by a handful of hair, grazing the lines of his throat with his teeth. "You have the worst ideas about literally everything. And for some reason that makes me want to shove my bulge in you." Dave groans. "Is that enough?"

"Uh, nope." Dave's hands knead his ass, grip his thighs. "I need more. Come on. You don't understand how hungry I am for this shit."

"You actually want me to insult you?"

"When you put it like that it sounds kind of bad," Dave says into Karkat's neck, grinding up with his hips, groaning, and Karkat is struck breathless at how little he has to do to get Dave this desperate.

"So, what, you're so used to people doing everything you say that you developed one of those terran...sex...things about people that give you shit?"

"Good analysis," Dave says, hands all over Karkat's back, squeezing at his waist, his ass. "Gold star." Of fucking course. There's an edge to his laugh that makes a confused mess of emotions twist in Karkat's middle. "Keep going."

Karkat shoves Dave down flat on his back and moves so that the press of his thighs around Dave's arms pins him down completely. Dave wets his lips with his tongue, eyes unfocused. "Everyone thinks you're so important. That they have to bend over fucking backwards to do everything you say." Karkat unzips his fly and pushes his jeans and underwear just far enough down his hips to shove a hand between his legs, to tease his bulge until it swells.

Dave whines, mouth dropping open, tongue ready. His chest is heaving.

"But this is what you really are, isn't it?" He pulls at the back of Dave's neck, forcing his head forward, easing his bulge into Dave's mouth, over the velvet heaven of his tongue. "Completely fucking desperate for, anyone, to get a fucking clue, and treat you like the pathetic piece of shit you, really are..."

Dave's hips are jerking upwards into nothing. Karkat has him almost completely immobile, and Dave is keening, voice muffled, as Karkat slowly fucks his mouth. When Karkat starts to feel the first stirrings of orgasm building inside him he pulls back, lets Dave's head drop back against the cushions. Dave is panting, boneless, eyes hazy, and Karkat grabs his chin, directs his gaze to his own.

"Jesus. Look at you."

"Please, do," Dave gasps, hoarse and breathless.


	6. Round Peg in a Round Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmm more nsfw

"I don't usually tell people that shit." Dave breaks the sleepy silence, voice rough. He clears his throat. "Just. So you know."

Karkat's brow furrows. Dread creeps, little by little, up his chest.

The movie credits are rolling. Dave's head is tucked perfectly into his shoulder, one bare arm slung over his chest. Karkat's own fingers are helplessly drawn into the short hairs at the back of Dave's neck. Ugh. He's so _soft_. Terran soft. Fucking unbelievable. It takes all his concentration to keep his fingers still. "Uh. Exactly what shit are you talking about?"

"You know. About. Wanting to be, uh." He flounders for a moment. "Uh. You know."

The dread is perched completely on Karkat's chest, now, heavy and immutable. "But telling _me_ about it seemed like a good idea?"

Dave shrugs. "Yeah."

"You're an idiot."

Dave snorts. "Yeah."

"Why?" Karkat demands, after a moment.

"Why did I tell you? I mean..." Dave laughs a little, nervous. "I couldn't exactly help myself." He slides a hand over Karkat's bare shoulder and down his arm, pressing closer, smiling against his chest, all soft, warm terran affection that Karkat somehow can't bring himself to rebuff. "You didn't exactly need any prompting, either. Fuck, you're good. This is. So good."

Karkat remembers Dave between his legs, tongue flicking hot inside him, moaning, enthusiastically sucking and kissing at the base of his bulge, at the folds of his nook. Tired warmth swells between his legs. "Huh. Yeah. Actually."

Dave hums in delight and pushes his face into the crook of Karkat's neck. It's wrong. This is wrong. Karkat shouldn't be allowing this, he shouldn't be _enjoying_ this...

But.

But?

Dave doesn't know.

He doesn't entirely understand quadrants, no, not entirely, so he wouldn't know if Karkat just...

Just a little.

Karkat's fingers twitch over the soft fuzz at Dave's hairline. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck he's soft. He allows his fingertips to stroke the back of Dave's neck over and over, over impossibly soft skin up through impossibly soft hair. Dave responds with the neediest little sigh and Karkat _wants_ him, even though he just _had_ him, wants him messy and needy and vulnerable and...

"We should clean up," Karkat says, trying not to sound reluctant, trying not to sound like he's losing control. Because he isn't.

"Ugh. Why?" Dave whines. "Do you even know how often I get to just lie around and be completely disgusting with nowhere to be and nothing to do? Like never. Let me have this, man. It's so fucking good."

"No. Get up."

Dave whines a little longer but eventually obeys. He whines up the whole staircase, too, about how sore he is from all the stairs _yesterday_ , among other things, though he doesn't seem to mind kneeling on the floor of the ablution trap with his cheek pressed to the thigh Karkat has slung over his shoulder, one soapy hand between Karkat's legs. 

"OK, I take it back, this is better. Oh my _god_ , you are just...so..." Dave groans, fingertips so slick and gentle that Karkat's face is burning. Hot water pelts his side. His hands twitch against the cool tile. "Can I just...do this? Can this be like, my purpose in life? Doing shit like this for you?"

Oh, _god_. Dave's hands are sending little exhausted shocks of pleasure through him, and shame twists in Karkat's middle at the simultaneous, ecstatic clench of his nook and the beginning of a deep, clicking vibration in his abdomen. "W-What?"

"Fuck, that was like, way too weird and forward, sorry dude," Dave says with a little self-deprecating laugh. His hand moves in broad circles over Karkat's inner thighs, wiping away the last of the sticky mess between them. "Oh my god." He shoves himself up a little, dropping Karkat's thigh off his shoulder, pushing his cheek against Karkat's middle. "That sound. Oh _man_. Oh wow."

"So what?" Karkat says, trying to keep his voice steady, trying to swallow down the unmistakable sound of his control slipping, slipping completely.

"That is so cool. Wait, are you _embarrassed_ about it?" Dave asks, looking up at Karkat, head tilted just slightly to one side. "Why?"

Karkat lets out a little hiccup of a chirp and grits his teeth. "None of your business."

Dave laughs, grinning delightedly up at him. "Ooh. Good. A xenobiological mystery. I fucking love those. But I guess that's fair. I like it, though. You should keep doing it."

"I can't fucking help it. I can't just start doing it whenever I feel like it."

"Can I try and figure out how it works?" Dave's hand is on his stomach, now, rubbing slick circles into his skin, his tone so stupid and flirty. Karkat throws an arm over his burning face.

"Why would you _want_ to."

"Are you kidding? Why _wouldn't_ I want to?"

Karkat doesn't even know what to say to that.

Dave complains endlessly when he finally gets up off the floor of the ablution trap, about how he's never going to be able to stand completely upright every again and how unfair it is to be over thirty (Karkat does a quick mental calculation -- what is that, like, fourteen? Fifteen sweeps? Karkat's next wriggling day will be his fourteenth). He seems perfectly fine at the mirror, though, blowdrying and styling his hair, even though all he seems to plan on wearing, possibly for the entire trip, are those same ratty sweatpants and a tank top.

Karkat watches him, incredulous and strangely helpless, and wants nothing more than to thoroughly undo all his work.

"Got any good ideas for lunch? I'm game. The more legs the better."

Karkat snorts.

"Or do you wanna try something of mine? I forget, can you guys actually eat like, bread?"

"That's that compressed grain loaf, right?"

"Sure."

"No."

Dave laughs. "So do you guys ever eat plants? Are you like cats where sometimes you need to go outside and just like, chomp on some grass? Or do you think of plants as being completely inedible at all times? Like rocks or something?"

"They're completely inedible."

"Aw. So what would like, happen...if you did?"

Karkat stares at him, the need to laugh and the need to glare fighting to the death inside him. "Do you _seriously_ want me to answer that question?"

Dave cracks up and grabs him around the waist. "Sorry, man! You just gotta chalk it up to my," he waggles his eyebrows, "unquenchable thirst for xenobiology." 

"Why do you have so many questions? You've been with trolls before, I can fucking tell."

"None of them were as nice as you."

Karkat's eyes widen, just a little. He's pretty sure that was meant to be flirty, but Dave's smile has turned awfully brittle around the edges.

"Sorry. I'll shut up."

"You don't...have to," Karkat says, finally, and wants to kick himself at how weird and stilted his voice has gotten. "I don't actually mind the questions."

"Oh my god. I hope you mean that."

Karkat's arms are around Dave's shoulders, his back to the wall next to the replicator. Dave's hands rest at his waist. "I'm not...nice," Karkat says, a bit of a growl in his voice.

Dave shrugs, a lopsided grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Stop looking at me like that. You don't know anything about me."

"Yeah, but, I've been lining up a pretty good snapshot. I'm just kind of, like, working on adjusting the focus." Dave leans in and drops a soft line of kisses up Karkat's throat and across his jaw. "I like what I've seen so far." His hands smooth up Karkat's back and rub circles into his spine, and Karkat goes a little weak, the fluttering feeling deep in his chest signalling the fact that he's about to...start...

Karkat can't take any more. "Stop _doing_ shit like this!"

Dave's eyebrows shoot upwards. "Like what?"

"Never...never mind." Karkat ducks away from Dave's arms and moves towards the table. " _This_ is why I don't fucking do interspecies hookups." He plops down into one of the chairs.

"What do you mean?" Karkat can feel Dave's eyes on him. "Is this about some quadrant thing? What do you see us as? Black?"

Karkat stares over at Dave, a shock going through him, like he's been doused in ice water. "I knew you weren't serious about this, I obviously fucking knew that." His hands are shaking. He crosses his arms.

Dave sinks down across from Karkat at the table. "Uh, that didn't have anything to do with anyone being _serious_ or not about anything, dude, but I guess if we're gonna go down that road, I'm not going to live with having to bottle up feelings in a relationship, so. Uh. I'm fucking human? I don't do quadrants. If that's a dealbreaker for you or something we should probably like, talk that shit over."

Anger and shame twist up in Karkat's chest and suddenly he's furious, far angrier than he should be over the fact that Dave is able to just come out and say it so easily: _I don't do quadrants._ Like it's something someone is allowed to say. "Of _course_ it's a dealbreaker, you complete fucking shithead." He lets out an angry breath and slumps against the back of his chair, clenching his jaw, trying to keep his lower lip from shaking.

Dave stares down at the table, his eyebrows furrowed.

Karkat finally just stands, unsteady, and walks around the table, past the couch, up the stairs. Dave calls after him but he doesn't stop, not until he'd closed the door of his ablution block, turned on the sink, and sunk down onto the lid of the load gaper.

He sobs into his hands, as silently as he can, shoulders shaking, tears dripping into his palms. There's nowhere to go on this fucking ship. This is the most privacy he's going to get, but it's so obvious and transparent that there's no _way_ Dave doesn't know. The idea of Dave just sitting around downstairs knowing that he's losing every shit he has to lose over this fills Karkat with such urgent humiliation.

He _knew_ Dave wasn't going to want to fill a quadrant with him. He _knew_ it. From the beginning. Why does it hurt so much to hear him say it?

Shame twists in Karkat's chest. He isn't reacting like he should. He shouldn't be _getting his feelings hurt_ by something a potential kismesis says, for fuck's sake. This is a fucking disaster, he's

_doing it again_

No.

He's not doing anything again, because there's nothing _to_ do, this time or any other time. Quadrants are quadrants and that's that, and Karkat doesn't have anyone in his quadrants right now because of his job and that's.

All.

It's a long time before Karkat goes back downstairs. Dave is still slumped over at the table, chin in one hand. He turns toward the door, brows furrowed, eyes worried, and Karkat almost turns around and heads back upstairs.

"Are you OK?" Dave asks, and Karkat makes a beeline for the replicator. He flips through menu after menu. Nothing sounds good. He doesn't even know what he wants.

"No, because you keep asking me shit like that," Karkat answers, finally, unable to keep the quaver out of his voice. He gives up and sinks back down at the table.

"Look, I can't just not care about what you're feeling, dude. Maybe you guys can separate that shit out but I can't. I love teasing you. But I'm not just going to...make you sad and not...care, even I'm not that much of an asshole..."

Karkat's eyes widen. "I don't want you to fucking care."

Dave sweeps one hand through the air in a wide gesture. "Dude, it is way too fucking late for that."

Karkat stares at him, eyes still wide, widening. "Shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm pretty sure I do, though."

Karkat breaks eye contact first.

"Look," Dave says, voice soft. "I could've gotten a ride from like. Anyone else. But." He gestures between them. "I just couldn't let this slip by, you know? What we have." He laughs, a nervous little burst. "This. Actual, honest to god _chemistry_. That's something I don't question. If it happens, no matter who it's with, I follow it. There's shit in life that's worth missing, but this feeling _isn't_. Not for anything."

Karkat looks up at him with accusing eyes, brows furrowed. "We're fucking adults, here. I don't need some childish fucking fling where we can't figure out what we _want_."

"I do know what I want. What do _you_ want?"

A kismesis, a matesprit, a moirail, auspistices, and the ability to _keep_ them. To be close to someone, in any quadrant. To never wake up alone again. Karkat shakes his head. "I don't _know_. Which is the fucking _problem_."

"Alright."

They look at each other. Dave's eyes are worried. Karkat's brow softens. "Look. I just...all the...pale stuff has really been fucking with me."

Dave frowns. "Shit. I didn't...I mean, I knew it was bugging you but that's just kind of, what we were doing? Fucking with each other? But I took it too far, I guess. In the wrong direction? And I'm. Pretty clingy. Anyone who's been with me knows that. I'll...try to back off. If it makes you that uncomfortable, I'll stop."

Karkat shakes his head. "I'm not done, I." He bites his lip, his bloodpusher beginning to race. "That's the other part, of the problem. I don't, exactly, want you to stop." There isn't anything close to enough air in the room, anymore. His chest hurts. "I like it. I...I like it," he admits, voice quavering. His hands are shaking. He grips the edge of the table.

"Are you OK?" Dave's eyes are so _concerned_ that Karkat can't even stand it. Why is Dave being like this? He shouldn't be OK with this. He shouldn't. Why is he? Karkat tries to take long, even breaths to calm himself, but it's not working. Oh, god, no. It's been sweeps since he last had a fucking _panic attack_. No, no, no, no, no...Humiliation crushes at his chest. "Hey, Karkat. Look at me. Are you going to be OK?"

Karkat nods, breathing high and fast and uncontrollable.

"Remember that." Dave stands and moves towards the replicator, then comes back with a glass of water. "Here. Take this. Its cold. Feel it?" The glass is cool against his palms. Slick with condensation.

Karkat takes a small sip of water, then another, until he's able to focus his mind on that and nothing else. His breathing evens and slows. Everything is foggy and weird, and.

God. Fucking. Damn it.

He lets Dave lead him back over to the couch, eyes glued to the floor. He curls up in the corner of it while Dave fucks with the controls, and when Dave's settled down on the perfect incline of back vs. seat he curls up next to Dave, hiding his face in his shirt.

Dave rubs circles on his back, and Karkat lies in his arms for a long time. When he's completely calm that fucking godforsaken...clicking begins again, but Dave doesn't comment, just squeezes him tighter, dropping a long kiss to the base of one horn.

"It's probably because I'm by myself so much. I mean. I was on a run for a quarter sweep, for chrissakes."

"I guess. You're really upset about it, though. I thought not staying in your lane with quadrants wasn't really a big deal, I mean, we just watched that movie where..."

"This is different," Karkat interrupts.

"It is?"

"Of course it is," Karkat snaps. The clicking stutters.

"Well, I mean, yeah, sure, I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's what I'm saying. I don't care. I'm good with whatever. But I should be able to express how I _feel_ , and, uh, so should you, you know?"

Karkat is silent.

"That's like the whole point. Isn't it? It is for me. But I'm a known, uh, hedonist, so. Grain of salt."

Karkat considers it. Dave continues to stroke his back, and it feels so _good_ , _Dave_ feels so good, warm and soft and...the clicking deepens, quickens, vibrating against Dave's side. Karkat relaxes completely against him as the rush of pale endorphins that he's going to do his best not to deny this time turns his limbs to jelly.

"How do you feel?" Dave asks, and mouths the base of one horn, hands warm and sure on Karkat's back, at his waist. Pleasure pulses lazily between Karkat's legs at the pressure of them.

"Good," Karkat says, voice cracking. He clears his throat.

"You should like. Describe how you feel. Maybe we can figure out what you do want."

"Yeah. OK." Karkat buries his face in Dave's chest. "You make me feel. Uh. Good." Blood is rushing in his ears. "When you touch me I just..." He makes a frustrated little sound. His face is burning.

"Just what?" Dave teases, low and flirty, and Karkat swallows, mouth dry.

"Everything's mixed up. This is fucking absurd. This right here? Pale as fuck. You're holding me, I'm fucking...vocalizing, you're asking me about my _feelings_ , but I am so fucking wet right now that I'm not even going to be able to move a fucking centimeter without humiliating myself...what!"

Dave laughs, loud and long. He hugs Karkat tight around the shoulders. "Just let me know if you want me to take care of that. But if you just wanna cuddle and shit that's cool too."

Karkat groans. "What even _are_ you," he mumbles into Dave's chest.

"Into you like a round peg in a round hole, is what."

"What the fuck."

They spend a long time curled up together, Dave petting and stroking at Karkat's hair, at his back, at his arms and hands, until Karkat is a complete mess, lethargic and boneless, heat absolutely throbbing between his legs. A little hiccup of a sound interrupts what had become a steady reverberation in his chest, and Karkat flushes all the way to his hairline at the completely shameless, keening chirp that follows.

"Oh, oh, wow," Dave says, lifting Karkat's chin, looking into his eyes. Karkat's face is burning. "You should make that sound whenever you want, dude. I'm not kidding."

The smallest amount of relief tugs at the corner of his mind. Maybe it _is_ alright.

Except Dave doesn't know what he's talking about. He has absolutely no authority over whether it's OK or not, except.

Except.

Everything shifts. Karkat suddenly understands what Dave meant, before. He's not _with_ another troll, right now. He's with _Dave_. Nobody's _watching_ them. Nobody gives a shit. All he has to worry about is what _he_ likes, and what _Dave_ likes. Dave strokes the lines of his jaw with his thumbs, cradling Karkat's head in his hands, and he drops the lightest little kiss to Karkat's forehead, to his nose, to the corner of his mouth.

Karkat _trills_ , long and shameless and gratified, and Dave's eyes widen. "This is incredible. You're incredible."

The compliment burns like fire at the core of him. He's desperate for the warmth but can't help but cringe away from it. "No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

He trills again, blood pounding in his neglected, unextended bulge. "You can, uh. Take care of this, now." He grinds a little against Dave's hip.

"Oh," Dave says, his eyes widening. "OK."

Karkat is far too lethargic to help much when Dave undresses him, but Dave doesn't seem to mind it at all. Karkat sinks back into the couch, legs falling open, and Dave takes one hungry look at him before stripping off his own shirt and shoving his pants down his hips.

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck...Karkat _moans_ when Dave pushes inside him, the rigid pressure of his bulge driving maddeningly up the interior length of his own unextended one, and Karkat cries out in relief when he finally feels it swell outward and curve upwards. His nook spasms. Fuck. _Fuck_. Pailing humans in this way is always so intense. 

"That's right, babe, let me take care of you," Dave is murmuring, panting, pushing his thighs wide, hips moving shallow and steady and maddening. "Gonna take such good care of you..."

Karkat cringes in humiliation at the long trill that sentence wrings out of him. Dave's hips snap forward and he moans, throwing his head back, chest heaving.

"How are you doing?" Dave asks when he's gotten control of himself, hips flush against the backs of Karkat's thighs. Karkat makes a little hiccup of a chirp.

"I'm OK." Karkat lets out a self-deprecating laugh and passes a hand over his face. "I'm just...hnng...Wallowing in my own depravity."

Dave pulls out of him almost completely, then pushes back in, so slowly that it's only a shade away from frustrating. Oh, it's too good. "That's what I'm talking about, man. You gotta...oh, fuck. You gotta. Just. Ahh...Wallow in your own depravity."

"I'm not saying you...aah! Have a...point, but...oh... _oh!_...uh...you, might be...on to, something."

"You know I am."

Dave thrusts into him, impossibly deep, impossibly good, and Karkat can't even think of a comeback.

**Author's Note:**

> [here's the tag](http://maybesomehomestuckart.tumblr.com/tagged/jack-of-hearts) on my blog for this fic, there's art and extra info and stuff


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